TORONTO — In a game where the Toronto Maple Leafs were without their No. 1 game-breaker, goaltending took centre stage. And the guy in Blue and White wound up being one save better than his top-flight opponent.
Matt Murray made 32 saves — including a stunner or two — John Tavares scored for the fourth straight game and Mitch Marner tied a franchise record by netting the dramatic game-winner, as the Leafs pulled out a 2-1 victory over Juuse Saros and the Nashville Predators on Wednesday night at Scotiabank Arena.
When a player like Auston Matthews is on the sideline — No. 34 was ruled out of the lineup for the first time this season with an injury that’s not believed to be serious — his presence is missed in any number of ways, but perhaps never more so than when a club is trying to beat a hot goalie late in the contest on a power play.
That, naturally, was exactly the situation the Leafs found themselves in, locked 1-1 with the Predators, when Nashville’s Mark Jankowski earned himself a double-minor for high-sticking Morgan Rielly with fewer than five minutes to go in the third period. Toronto had gone 0-for-3 with the man advantage to that point in the game and really didn’t get much going against Saros and a terrific Nashville penalty-killing unit through the first half of Jankowski’s sentence.
But when Predators defenceman Alexandre Carrier lost his stick in pursuit of Tavares, the Buds went to work. Tavares sent a pass from behind the net to Nylander at the top of the right circle. No. 88 showed shot just for just a moment before sliding a pass over to Marner, who made sure to take a beat before whipping the puck past a sprawling Saros with 1:15 to go in the third stanza.
“I’m just trying not to get that [shot]blocked or get that save to be on a highlight reel,” said Marner, who equalled Darryl Sittler’s team record by recording a point in his 18th consecutive home outing. “Just trying to put it in the net and luckily was as able to.”
Yes, it took a lot to get one past either stopper on this night. Tanner Jeannot learned that early on when the Nashville right winger had multiple attempts denied by Murray on the same sequence. First, he was blocked by Murray’s glove hand on a breakaway.
Then, moments later, he was standing all by himself at the side of the Leafs crease when a pass he seemed destined to one-time home made its way to his blade. That’s when Murray — facing the wrong way, no less — splayed out like vintage Dominik Hasek to take a sure goal away. “That was a bit of a crazy play,” Murray said. “I just kind of got spun around — there was some contact after the first shot— so I was looking over my shoulder and saw the guy made a pass down to the back door, so I knew I just had to kind of get something over there.”
Eye-popping as that save with an outstretched arm was, Murray made several others in the first period to keep Nashville off the board. He stoned Cody Glass on a great power-play look from the slot and thwarted Nino Niederreiter on a re-direct from in tight.
That allowed Toronto to take a 1-0 lead late in the opening frame when Nylander grabbed a puck at the blue line Timothy Liljegren had sent up ice after a Predators turnover in the neutral zone. Coming in on a 2-on-1 with Tavares, Nylander danced around Carrier, but the puck trickled off his stick just as he cleared the Nashville defenceman. Not to worry, though, as Tavares was standing in the perfect spot to reach back and swish it past Saros on the backhand.
The goal was Tavares’ fifth in his past four contests and 20th of the season. The Leafs captain now has more 20-goal seasons on his resume (13) than every active player save Washington Capitals sniper Alex Ovechkin (14).
“Scoring always is great and always means something, so just want to continue to help the team,” Tavares said.
It took another white-hot scorer to get one past Murray just 1:46 in the second. Preds left winger Filip Forsberg showed off the filthy hands that have helped him score eight times in his past eight games when he took a pass from Juuso Parssinen after the Leafs had failed to clear the zone. Standing all alone in front of Murray, Forsberg easily could have chosen to attempt a one-timer to get the puck over the line. Instead, he coolly sucked it from right to left and flicked a backhander past the helpless Leafs goalie.
Between that goal and Marner’s eventual winner, there wasn’t a lot to choose between the clubs as both sides tried to scratch out the goal-ahead tally. “There wasn’t a lot of ice, wasn’t a lot of plays to be made,” Marner said. “But I thought we just stuck with our game plan of being hard to play through the neutral zone, trying to get back quickly on pucks make plays to get out of our zone and I thought our D did a great job with their gaps, just really being up tight, turning a lot of plays away and our forwards were there for the back pressure we needed.”
One of the guys who was hustling up and down all night was Bobby McMann. With Matthews out, the 26-year-old played his first NHL game fresh after being named American Hockey League player of the week with the Toronto Marlies. “He was really competitive on the puck, had a couple scoring chances himself, created one or two for others and just played a real solid game for a guy in his debut,” said Toronto coach Sheldon Keefe, whose team has won three straight games and will immediately turn around and face the Red Wings in Detroit Thursday night.
Of course, nobody was more deserving of praise against the Preds than Murray, who made a couple more big-time stops in the third to guide this one home. “Obviously their guy on the other end is playing really well too, it’s an elite goalie so you need to match and save for save,” Keefe said of his stopper. “I’m not sure there’s been a game [this year]where I’ve left thinking the goaltender won us the game. And in a lot of ways, you could say that here tonight.”
